UE4 - 4.19 Layered Materials Setup

[@DanRickmanMedia]

God tier tutorial, amazing. I'm massively late to the part but yeah, thank you for this. I don't know how much has changed by now with this setup but i'm going to run with this see how I get on!

[@williamlacrosse9389]

Pure gold! You made my whole career with that! Now I can baked my ID, curvature and AO and make a dynamic material. Thx u so much.

[@netrarajpun]

Thanks Ryan, this is soo good and simple that it don`t even hurt my small brain. I got hook up some vertex color to the layer blend and got exactly the combination of procedural and manual so easily that it feels like magic to me. Thank you

[@AndrewWeirArt]

I wish I had seen this when I was first learning Layered materials. Great stuff!

[@samohickey]

Great video! I love your teaching style: very informational and yet still to the point. Thank you.

[@felsenstern]

Thanks for the video. I was really confused before when it came to what to instance but you explained it really neat and thorough. Thumbs up! - Just let's hope Epic is finalizing it soon!

[@gustavorios2]

You are an amazing teacher. Thank you

[@joelwalden5504]

So great! Thanks man, this is a fantastic tutorial about a fantastic feature! Well presented!

[@ObilloFitz]

2024 and Ryann Manning is still giving Much thanks for this

[@3dcgphile]

This was a super helpful video. Thanks so much for putting it together for us!

[@PiotrDąbrowski]

Its old tutorial but still extremely useful :D

[@Omar.bin.khattab]

perfect ... special thanks to you Ryan ... have a nice day ...

[@gg-kf1bi]

Thank you so much, you've helped me a lot!

[@lista_devideos_cursoscompl1338]

we are learnet for more tutorial plz ,i soo exciteeed, great stuuff , incrediby much for this , tutorial subbed

[@ronysvlog1876]

I been looking for this, thank you so much for this video bud. One question, how to make this to support vray materials? I connect the material layers to based colour on vraymtl directly but shows just black texture in render. Please help

[@wolfen231]

Thanks. This was pretty helpful to get something going for me. =)

[@jamesrascal001]

Really useful! will be watching more of your video's, thanks :)

[@jangolerjangoler6581]

Thank you very much for the video. It is the unique best one in layered material.

[@HangryBunniesFromMars]

Thank you so incredibly much for this.

[@NoobishAlpha]

Thanks my friend !! Have a good day / night

[@devongisbert3971]

Hey Ryan, would you be able to cover anything for the newest release? Some of the nodes you had mentioned for the newer methods weren't available in 4.24 :/

[@ThatRyanManning]

Definitely. I'll see what I can do.

[@jonbrandre3006]

Did they revert to the old?

[@blakeXYZ]

What nodes did you end up using?

[@namrog84]

Anyone know why hasn't Layered Materials gained more popularity? So few people have ever talked about it years later. Not even a single item on the store selling some nice premade list of 'pre-made blends' or something? The only thing I can think of, is that the name of the feature is awful and overlapping with several other unrelated features.

[@fernandobaquiran6837]

Great video! Just starting with UE and of all the videos that I have seen bout Layered materials, this is the only on that I can really understand. Most other videos teaches the "old" method in making Material layers which is really confusing. I have followed every step in this video but when I got to the RGBA Mask (22:00) I get an error at the ChannelMaskParameter Node when I connect it into the BlendMaterialAttributes Node. I don't think I missed anything in the steps. Any ideas? I'm using UE 4.26. Oh. I just restarted it and it 's working now. My bad.

[@SkyBuild25]

awesome can't wait to start using this thank you

[@mch43856]

Really helpful and well done video, thanks!

[@tayloralan92]

Super helpful video, thanks!

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

Thank you So much for this in depth tutorial! Subbed

[@ThatRyanManning]

Thanks @fataxel! Appreciate your support.

[@valtzar3200]

29:22 Can we do the same for the Ambient Occlusion Map?

[@dani3d_b]

is there a way to me to get a specific layer of the Material Attribute Layers into a node(of type MA)? just like the GetMaterialAtributes node but only a single layer

[@AdrianoFerreira-nb8cd]

Hey Ryan! Thanks for tutorial. I was wondering if this would work with a height blend vertex blend? Would I add the height blend node into material layer blend mask function? I saw that you had a vertex blend function as well.

[@cyberspace7668]

Fuk.. got to enable material layers in Unreal Engine Project settings..xD

[@AdrianTabacaru]

Hey Ryan, awesome tutorial. Thank you so much for taking time to make it. I have a quick question, is there a way to access the Material Layers - Blend Asset - Vector Parameter Value in Sequencer? I have tried making a Material Instance for the Layer Blend Material and I cannot reach the Vector Parameter into sequence. I am trying to animate the crossfade. I have tried with material parameter collection, got that into Sequencer but the crossfade is not smooth. I see stepping between 0-1 values. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks!

[@ThatRyanManning]

A couple ways to do this. Material Parameter collections can be targeted in Sequencer. You can also access the material parameters by adding the material component in sequencer. Target the element via the "+" add button, add the component, then target the material parameters.

[@annezhang3205]

thanks for your video!

[@wellweldedgames]

Thanks a lot! By the way You have a new subscriber )

[@JieDu-yj2vd]

How to set different physical materials for each layer?

[@johnmccormick2347]

When setting up my Master_Layer material I get a render warning : Missing Function Input "in" - FIXED - Use preview as default check on Master_Layer_Instance"

[@arefeghbali3914]

Is it possible to use both layer blend and blend material attributes together?

[@zeon3d755]

You know how to add weightmaps for layers in UE4.26?

[@cwidd1929]

Is there a version of this that works with displacement?

[@Yarogor]

In 2020 those material layers still crash engine (4.24). In blank project they work fine (mostly). But when you turn them On in your heavy project - it crashes very often. Tried in 3 different projects.

[@dalandutube]

thank you that was very well done

[@omri1324]

It seems like Epic got rid of this workflow altogether?

[@adamhajdu]

Thank you

[@shanei.7008]

I'm still fairly new to unreal, but I'm trying to make 1 single material that can transition between 4 seperate metals with a gradient slide/slice effect. I've made one that works nicely, effect included, but it can only transition between 2 metal types (using a MFfunction with a 3 layer blend - inputs 1 2 & 3 are color parameters) but I need to have more than the 2 available inputs for this project and master material. Are layered materials a better route to go for this?

[@Raul195]

Great video! Is there a way to assign PhysicalMaterials to the layered ones?

[@nov3000]

THANK YOU AGAIN MY FREIND. GREAT .IF YOU CAN DO A TUTORIAL ABOUT LANDSCAPE MATERIALS

[@Dianixi]

Hello, does this still work?(second method)My layers are not updating in 4.25 and crashes randomly. Do I need to enable something for this?

[@vfxfisher]

Thank you very much for this insightful tutorial. I have a question though. During your talk you used an RGBA as you blend. This all makes perfect sense. I would like to use a vertex pain. I see you have that listed when you created the RGBA blend; but you do not discuss it. I have looked at other tutorials and not seen anything. Sadly, time is of the essence. Do you know of any place on the web that may enlighten me on how to implement this?

[@ThatRyanManning]

I cover Vertext m,asking here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/garZn5d8nMqjeLc , and here: kzbin.info/aero/PLEopipDmYdmy3H4Rp1iFSQ1epSUSyZOfL

[@samuelenslin1850]

Hey Ryan, can you confirm wether its possible to expose material layer parameters to be animated in sequencer or they simply can´t be animated? Works for normal material instances, but with this setup I can´t animate any of the parameters...

[@AdrianTabacaru]

Did you find out how to do this?

[@samuelenslin1850]

@@AdrianTabacaru Nope. Used normal material instances instead.

[@EndlesPhenxia]

Is there any way to combine this method with height blend?

[@ultraxrace]

Hi Ryan. Thanks for the tutorial. I have one question. After mixing by this method is it possible to apply vertex paint?

[@kenalpha3]

Can you? Im using Quixels plugin to make a > Material Blend. Idk if their method/process is the same as this home brew material blend??

[@Serdeegee]

Fantastic and really helpful tutorial! One question though, what if my base material has opacity? Plugging the texture's alpha map into the "opacity mask" slot of its "MakeMaterialAttributes" node doesn't work like it would normally in a regular material. Is this an easy fix? I reckon I'm probably just missing something basic.

[@ThatRyanManning]

There are two places you can change the Blend Mode; one in your master and also on a per-instance basis. i.imgur.com/NtVsPLm.jpg

[@decorix]

Thanks for the tutorlals. Is there anyway of showing me how to convert a materialfunction to the MaterialLayers setup with version 4.20? Using ML_LowContrastHardMetal its from Paragon assets. I did follow ur stuff, but I'm stuck. I copied the nodes from the materialfunction into the new MaterialLayers system as you shoed in the tutorial.

[@zhangjian3654]

Great explain!

[@realFinnB0]

Thank you so much!

[@zerocoool1111]

Thank you Ryan for this break down. Im loving this system and know how to use it thanks to this video. Question. I followed how you added a normal in the Master Material and laid over all layers. But how do I do it for another map like Ambient Occ? You created and GetMaterialAtt and a Set MaterialAtt and had the nodes in between. Got that part. Lets say I want to do the same thing for a ambient occ map. Ive been playing around and the only way I get get it to work is if just plug in an AO map directly into the AmbientOcc of the SetMaterialAttibutes. Do I even need the GetMaterialAtt. I can figure out what the inbetween nodes would be if I did it the similar way with the Get and Set nodes. Thank you Randy.

[@ThatRyanManning]

Randy - My recommendation would be to add an additional AmbientOcclusion node to your "GetMaterialAttributes" and use "Blend_Overlay" (Blend_Overlay will either screen or multiply the Base and Blend together) to add your custom AO map. For additional control over your AO map, simply add a 3ColorBlend node(docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/engine/rendering/materials/functions/reference/imageadjustment). There are several methods, but this is just one. Here's the final setup: i.imgur.com/Mm6Rs1F.jpg

[@ThatRyanManning]

I should preface, I'm reusing the combined layered texture from Crunch which has the AO texture in the Blue channel.

[@ThatRyanManning]

@tapirtoon ! Yes. I cover this early on in the video, but you can use material functions (the old material functions) and then blend them together using mat layered blend nodes inside a stand-alone standard material. docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Rendering/Materials/LayeredMaterials

[@davinsaputraartandgamedev9453]

this is still in beta until now right?

[@davidrivasredondo]

Fantastico!!

[@julienlefebvre9764]

thanks for the video...any chance that you could show the vertex alpha blend mask that you have setup ?

[@ThatRyanManning]

@Julien Sure thing. Here's the basic setup for the Vertex Blend: i.imgur.com/Fw3Dqsw.jpg Like the RGBA Mask, this mask will allow you to specify (using the "Channel Mask Parameter") the blending of two materials based on Vertex color.

[@julienlefebvre9764]

Thanks Ryan for the quick response and screenshot going to try that today

[@АлексейПалько]

Is there a way to use more than three channel mask map? Like masking with ID map in Substance Painter.

[@ThatRyanManning]

Texture maps can only hold 4 channels of information (R, G, B, & A); however, there's nothing that says you can use multiple textures!

[@lochlancoull107]

hey there ryan awesome tutorial but i seem to be having an issue when hooking up my textures i keep getting the error "Arithmetic Between Types float4 and float3 are undefined " any help would be great!

[@ThatRyanManning]

Join my discord and send a screenshot. More than likely you're outputting RGBA to a node that requires just RGB

[@freshhh1553]

how to paint meshes with this layered material after creating it use RGB channels or is it necessary to add extras ?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Correct. You'll need additional controls. Check out this mini series I created on layered materials. It should help: kzbin.info/aero/PLEopipDmYdmy3H4Rp1iFSQ1epSUSyZOfL

[@gonzalofernandez4424]

Hi, Im using UE4 4.21 but for some reason I can't find "Material Layer" nor "Material Layer blend" on my content browser. Do you have any idea why this might be??

[@ThatRyanManning]

Make sure you have "Support Material Layers" enabled under the Rendering Tab: i.imgur.com/E1rJLGb.png

[@RahulAbhiwan-w4j]

Sir,I am getting trouble to create HDRi material could anyone please help me ?

[@mikejones4868]

Is it possible to have one material's blend mode different? Say I wan't to have One piece Opaque and the other one Translucent?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Absolutely. At the bottom of your material instances are overrides. You can change the instances without changing the master.

[@yovanvujacic8638]

@@ThatRyanManning Ryan, thanks a lot for the tutorial. Could you expand a bit on how to do this? I cant find a way of overriding the instances.

[@samwong8664]

Thanks for the tutorial, but what if i wanna make it 2 sided?

[@ThatRyanManning]

In the material parameters (click on the material output node) you can toggle 2-sided on/off

[@waltage]

can be different lit materials combined like subsurface and default lit?

[@ThatRyanManning]

Yes. Your materials are created and built very similar to the older method, with the exception of instead of using a standard material function, you're using the new layered material function (2:11) layer. Any of the parameters contained in that function can be utilized.

[@evgeniismirnov655]

Where to pay to?) It is cool. Thx maan!

[@l8ll8linflnlty98]

wow

[@jacksparrow7518]

Hi Ryan. great content, thanks for sharing.... but instead of talking about old way to do stuff al the time.. and confuse us (me?)... wouldn't be better to just say this is the new method.. and go for it clean and clear and make it easier? all this extra info is just so much confusing (I din't know old methoid so it's like extra info I wouldn't need for the new method). I didn't want in any way be annoying.. just telling what my experience have been, watching this video... which, again, is great for its content

[@cyberspace7668]

You are the Arch G, i havent figured it out yet, but this does explain a lot of fuckwork.. ho to reach you teta?

[@vassk1587]

Sad. Nothing understeand :(

[@waltage]

the main difference this shit don't updated after changes. after 3 years they Epic cannot make working instances!

[@wilismatrix9847]

very nice tutorial but confusing and not well structured, I find it hard to follow you because you keep going forward and backword between materials and methods

[@leksiu92]

In my opinion Unreal has total not intutive, different, idiotical, baaaad material system in this cause. But this tutorial is very good :)

[@ThatRyanManning]

UE4's material system is extremely powerful but also very technical. While is may be not as simple as other editors out there, speaking from experience, you have way more customizability! With enough time and education, UE4s material system is something you'll come to enjoy.

[@leksiu92]

@@ThatRyanManning I do not understand what happened to mix basic materials, such as in a e.g. blender. I already have materials, that I want to mix, I have to make do them again to material function. A better solution in my opinion would be to drag them into the editor and mix immediately basic materials with basic materials. Why couldn't they do that in this method? I do not know I do not understand this issue but I hope I will understand. And cannot doing a quick conversion of these materials, and have to work a lot, unnecessarily in my opinion. Sorry for bad english, thanks for reply and regards :) !

[@ThatRyanManning]

@@leksiu92 totally agree with you. I believe Epic is overhauling the layered material system to be more artist friendly. If you think of Material Functions as Materials, it makes it a bit easier, but still...not the ideal solution.